slime in water.

[jblackwell0488]

from time to time i have had trouble with these slime outbreaks in my tank. the slime is mostly clear and binds to everything but the fish and coral flesh in the tank...i have been doing 10-15 gallon water changes daily for the last 7 days and this only keeps it in check. i have had this problem on and off for seveal years now and it comes and goes with 3-4 months inbetween. with all the water changes done dily it is hard to give out constant water peramiters. tonite i have 0 nitates-0 phosphates-0 ammonia.
calcium is 480 and alk is 12.7 the system is a 7 .5 yr old 90 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump. total water volume is 85 gallons. there is appx 150 lbs of live rock in the tank and 5 small fish.... ( manderine, watchman gobie, 2-3 inch flame angle 2-inch sebae clown, and a 1.5 inch green chromis. these fish have been in the tankfor years. no new corals or rock added in 6-8 months......im sick of this reacurring slime.. any ideas from you all esspecally randy would be greatly appreciated...jaime

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The slime sounds like dinoflagellates to me. Does the slime trap bubbles during the day? That's a good indictor of dinos. It can be hard to deal with. You might want to search on dinos and see what treatments folks use.

My next months Reefkeeping article is on dinos treated with high pH.

Here's the suggestion section from it:

How to Treat Problem Dinoflagellates

Here’s a series of actions besides raising pH that may help aquarists to deal with problem dinoflagellates.

1. Reduce available nutrients in the water. These include nitrate and especially phosphate. In a severe case, the concerns with driving phosphate too low may be minor compared to the dinoflagellates (and their toxins). In addition to the usual ways of reducing nutrients (skimming, growing macroalgae, deep sand beds, etc.), aquarists should consider very aggressive use of granular ferric oxide (GFO). Putting a larger than normally recommended amount into a canister filter or reactor, and changing it every few days, may help. Don’t bother to measure the phosphate level, because the goal is to have it well below normally detectable levels (say, 0.02 ppm).

2. Reduce the photoperiod to four hours per day. This may help to keep the dinoflagellates under control, but by itself will not usually eradicate them.

3. Use more than normal amounts of activated carbon, and possibly ozone, to deal with toxins that the dinoflagellates may be releasing. This may allow snails and other organisms to survive while the dinoflagellates are still at nuisance levels.

4. Manually siphon out as much of the mass of dinoflagellates as possible. Daily removal would be preferable to keep populations at a reduced level..

How to Treat Problem Dinoflagellates: Elevated pH

In order to treat problem dinoflagellates with elevated pH, I’d recommend keeping the pH at 8.4 to 8.5 until they are gone. The pH can be as high as 8.6 without causing too much stress on anything else. The process may take weeks. In desperation (i.e. if nothing else works), allow the pH to go even higher.

pH is best raised by adding calcium hydroxide, either as limewater (kalkwasser; calcium hydroxide or “lime” dissolved in freshwater), or as a lime slurry. Bear in mind that aeration will tend to lower the pH, so if maintaining high pH is difficult, reducing aeration may help a bit. pH naturally drops at night, so be sure to measure pH in the early morning as well as later in the day.

As a general guideline, adding the equivalent of 1.25% of the tank’s volume in saturated limewater will raise the pH by about 0.66 pH units. That increase may be more than desired all at once, but that volume, or more, spread out over the course of a day may be necessary to maintain high pH.

If you are limited by low evaporation and cannot add enough limewater, use a slurry of lime. For example, 1-2 level teaspoons of calcium hydroxide can be made into a slurry by mixing with one cup of RO/DI (reverse osmosis/deionized) water (not tank water). Stir it up and dump it into a high flow area away from delicate organisms. Adding one level teaspoon of solid lime this way into a 100-gallon aquarium will raise its pH by about 0.3 pH units. This process may need to be repeated several times a day to keep the pH high.

Don’t worry about raising calcium or alkalinity with this method. The higher pH will accelerate calcification by organisms and abiotic precipitation. Beware that you may eventually clog pumps, impellers and intakes this way, and you might get white precipitates on surfaces (that is usually okay for a short term treatment and does not usually harm corals).

[jblackwell0488]

well that may just be what is going on. i do have air bubbles trapped under the slime. the tank is slightly cloudy. i just hit it hard with a dose of kalkwasser.. it brought he ph up to 8.14 from 7.81. none of my corals arre happy there are all retracted at this piont...
randy, what are dinoflagellates? who can keep them away? is there a certain food that triggers these out breaks? it seams like everytime i get my tank in tip top shape, the next thing i know in a day it all goes to hell....i use u/v serilization and that seams to keep it from takeing over the tank completly.. the last time i had this i was able to dip a net in the tank, swirl it around for a few seconds and pull out a 1/2 a net full of slime right out of the water colume...do i need to break down the tank and start over ?is it in the rocks and thats why it returns often.....randy thank you for your advise on this matter i am at my witts end. i have been doing saltwater on and off since 1970 and this is the only tank that has ever had this problem....knowone i know has ever seen this before. if is very frustrating...the funny part is that when it runs its coarse and disappears, the tank recovers rapidly and with in a week everyone is coloring up and looking good again...again thank you for your input and the info on raising the PH i hopre there is an amswer to this that will keep this away....jaime

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There are no easy answers for dinoflagellates. They thrive on nutrients, but even reducing nutrients does not always work well.

knowone i know has ever seen this before

Dino's are not that rare and are problematic when they are at plague proportions. There are several recent threads in this forum on them, but again, no easy answers.

Good luck with them.

[jblackwell0488]

well thank you for your input...i can say that it is clearing up a little today. i dont know if its from rising the PH or the daily water changes that i have been performing...it makes me crazy to think its gone and have it come back in spades a month or two later after the tank has recovered and all is well....again randy, thanx for the advise..i will try to post if i find anything of inportance...jaime

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You're welcome.

Good luck. :)

[jblackwell0488]

hey just to clearify this is what im fighting in my tank...others have told me that dinoflagellates are brown or tan in color. im sure you can identify it. this stuff is clear or milky white..is this dinoflagellate?

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a246/outprowllin/PICT0001-2.jpg

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a246/outprowllin/PICT0003-1.jpg
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a246/outprowllin/PICT0001-2.jpg

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Dinos can also be clear, and those may be dinos.


From my next months Reefkeeping article:

Identification of Dinoflagellates

The first step toward developing an appropriate treatment regimen for a particular pest is to properly identify it. Unfortunately, that is far easier said than done, and ordinary aquarists may have to settle for the idea that a pest “might be” X, so they should consider trying Y and Z treatments. While problem dinoflagellates have certain identifying characteristics, other organisms look somewhat similar, including cyanobacteria, some types of algae, diatoms and bacteria. While some treatments may apply to many of these pests (such as reducing their available nutrients), others are more specific. Treating with elevated pH, for example, is not generally useful in treating these other pests.

The problem dinoflagellates encountered in reef aquaria are often brown, although they can also be almost colorless, green, yellow/green or rust colored. They form masses that coat surfaces such as the tank’s walls, rock and sand. The coating often becomes filled with oxygen bubbles during the day as the organisms produce O2 during photosynthesis. The mass is often described as gelatinous, slimy, snotty or gooey. That part of the description may be the best way to distinguish it from other typical reef aquarium pests, although other organisms in the ocean (such as chrysophytes) have a similar appearance.

Snails seem to be especially prone to suffering from dinoflagellate toxins, so if you have pests such as dinoflagellates and notice that the snails seem to be moribund (near death, not moving, etc.), that may help finger dinoflagellates as the pests, although other pests can also produce toxins. Fish and other organisms that eat the dinoflagellates can die from their toxins as well.

Figures 1 and 2 show some typical organisms in reef aquaria that may be dinoflagellates, although they have not been identified as such by an expert. In any case, these have the typical look of trapped gas bubbles in a slimy coating on surfaces.

[SpectraPure]

Just a thought, but maybe an iodine bath for the corals would eliminate the slime on the corals. If you get a good phosphate media removal, and a good carbon, you should be able to eliminate your apparent organic problem. I started to lose my basketball sized Frogs Spawn, and an iodine bath was able to save it.

I am very sorry for your loss. This is a heartbreaker.

Jeremy

[SpectraPure]

Listen to RHF he is the man with the plan.

Jeremy

[Chicago]

good info.. thank you.. 5 years later.. LOL